Painting of chased wartime ferry up for auction

A painting of a Humber passenger steamship involved in a sea drama during World War One is to be auctioned after being discovered during a house clearance in Grimsby.

Auctioneers John Taylors said the painting depicted the SS Wrexham, a Humber ferry which was pursued by a German submarine while heading to the continent.

The captain of the vessel, James Fryatt, refused to stop when ordered by the Germans and the submarine chased the ship to Rotterdam. The Germans caught Fryatt three months later and shot him.

The painting of the SS Wrexham by Dutch marine artist Alfred Jansen goes under the hammer at the auction rooms in Louth at 10:00 BST on Tuesday.

The SS Wrexham was a Russian-built passenger ship bought by the Great Central Railway in 1905 for its Humber to the continent ferry services.

The ship was moved south four months into World War One to help out on the Harwich to Rotterdam route.

On 2 March 1915, the German submarine intercepted the ship and, when Fryatt declined to stop, the captain raced the ferry 40 miles (64km) across the North Sea, reaching Rotterdam a few hundred yards ahead of the submarine.

The chase burnt the ship's funnels and SS Wrexham was taken out of service to be fixed.

Fryatt then captained the larger and faster ferry, the SS Brussels, which was cornered by a flotilla of German torpedo boats three months later. The Germans put Fryatt on trial, condemned him to death and shot him the same day.

The painting of the SS Wrexham was picked up at a car boot sale by John Dacombe, a Grimsby trawler skipper during the 1960s and 70s. After Dacombe and his wife died, the painting resurfaced again when the family were clearing their house.

"The family were unaware of the exploits of the ship depicted in their painting and they were quite astonished when we briefed them on the story," auctioneer James Laverack said.

The painting, which is signed by Jansen and inscribed Antwerpen '06, is being sold together with another work also thought to have been done by Jansen.

The second painting depicts the SS Dewsbury, a vessel built at Earle's Shipyard in Hull in 1910.

"Jansen's ship paintings have sold for well over a thousand pounds but these two 120-year-old paintings are in need of a clean and, in the case of the Wrexham, some restoration work," Laverack said.

"And for that reason, they are being sold together as a pair and have been given a modest pre-sale estimate of just a couple of hundred pounds."

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